[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by AbyssalAriel

If Update EPUB Cover when Updating EPUB? is not checked, surely that should override all the other settings and never change whatever cover is there?

Update EPUB Cover when Updating EPUB? / Update EPUB Cover stops the FFF downloader from getting a cover from story specific cover images, first images or default cover during download. It's one of the oldest things in FFF plugin and pre-dates all other cover settings and features.

What happens after download, while putting info into Calibre and especially Generated Covers, is controlled by the other settings.

Honestly, Update EPUB Cover when Updating EPUB? / Update EPUB Cover is redundant with never_make_cover:true and should probably be removed. I started looking into that spring 2021 but never got back to it. The issue is whether FFF should automatically append that setting to personal.ini for the users who do have it unchecked be default or now.

Originally Posted by AbyssalAriel

Basically, I think all of the undesirable behavior I'm experiencing, can be boiled down to:

cover_image is changed to/set to "old" if I ever update the story from the website, no matter what it was before (or if there was even a cover_image field at all).

cover_image will contain specific, old, etc. But when you are injecting the cover, yes, they will all have some value. So unless you use generate_cover_settings it doesn't matter and they are treated the same.

Originally Posted by AbyssalAriel

never_make_cover:true, apparently just does not work, or maybe leaving the checkbox empty is failing to set it. Leaving Update EPUB Cover when Updating EPUB? unchecked does not prevent the cover being updated, in any circumstance at all. If the cover doesn't change, it's because of other settings that apply to only that story, every time. As a consequence, if I have Generate Calibre Cover: Yes, always on, absolutely nothing prevents the cover from being forcefully changed, so perfect vigilance on that one setting, is necessary to avoid permanently erasing covers that I like/am settled on.

I would say instead that it doesn't do what you expect because you're not understanding the division between downloading and metadata integration into Calibre that exists for historical reasons. FFF was an existing downloader that was integrated into Calibre as a plugin and is still released as a CLI.

Again, Update EPUB Cover when Updating EPUB? is old and only affects the download process itself, not the calibre integration afterwards. So, yes, Generate Calibre Cover: Yes, always will always generate a cover.

And yes, if you want to generate and replace covers and inject them into the epubs, but only some of the time, depending on your own criteria, it falls to you to turn that setting on and off as needed.

At that point, I'd turn off GC in FFF and generate covers manually if it were me.